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Like a horse to a buggy, there was once a time when nearly every major American media brand was hitched up to a family of affluent benefactors. The Washington Post had the Graham family; the Wall Street Journal had the Bancrofts; the Los Angeles Times had the Chandlers. The list goes on.

This wasn’t just a ploy to boost families’ political influence or social clout; it was great business. Until the early 1990s, the media was among the most profitable industries in America, said Nicholas Lemann, dean emeritus and professor at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. In fact, more than a dozen of the nation’s richest families can trace their fortunes back to the industry, according to Forbes’ list of America’s wealthiest families.

Today, many of those very same families won’t touch the media business with a ten foot pole. As free online content and the economic downturn deal the industry a one-two punch, more and more media dynasties are jumping ship, and selling off America’s most storied journalistic brands. Of the 12 wealthiest media families in America, a majority – seven – have completely divested, according to Forbes.

“It could be that a lot of families who may have wanted to get out for years have been getting the push they need to finally sell,” said Rick Edmonds, a media analyst at the Poynter Institute.

The new millennium has seen a spate of highly publicized selloffs. Perhaps the most infamous was that of the Graham family’s Washington Post, which was sold to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for only $250 million. In 2007, the Bancroft family sold the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $5 billion. And, in 2000, the Chandler family passed off the Los Angeles Times to the Tribune Company in exchange for stock.

The demise of family ownership would be a major loss, said Lemann. Unlike a corporation that’s beholden to shareholders, a private family – especially one that’s embedded in the community – has the ability to put journalistic values ahead of the bottom line, said Edmonds.

“Our generation believed that [family control was] the perfect solution for who should own a journalism organization,” Lemann said.

However, the days of private benefactors aren’t ending any time soon, said Edmonds. Family ownership was actually under greater threat when the industry was profitable. That’s when corporate giants like Gannett Company were gobbling up family-owned publications like popcorn. In the current economy, the buyers are much more likely to be families themselves, like the Murdochs, or private individuals.

“Today, a rich guy is likely to buy a publication in much the same way he might buy a sports team,” Edmonds said. “It’s fun, it’s high profile, and it’s good for the community, but he’s not going to get a whole lot of money out of it.”

There’s also no shortage of families who are still holding on. The Hearst family, for example, isn’t likely to give up its nearly $35 billion media empire any time soon. Neither is the Cox family, which presides over such stalwarts as the Kelley Blue Book. Below is a list of families who are still dominate players in American media, as well as those who jumped ship.

Families who control the media landscape:

Hearst

$35 billion

The richest family in media – and one of the wealthiest in the country – the Hearst family owns nearly 50 newspapers, 340 magazines and stakes in TV channels such as ESPN, Lifetime, and A&E. The family began to attain prominence in 1887, when William Randolf Hearst, who inspired Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, took over control of the San Francisco Examiner. Today, grandson William R. Hearst III chairs the family’s media empire.